Murray Chass’ piece offers common sense in Halper mud-slinging

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By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor | Commentary

If you’ve read an item or two mentioning Barry Halper‘s name recently, the portrayals of the deceased iconic collector have been far from flattering in items published by both Deadspin and The New York Post.

But there’s also a reason you didn’t read about the pieces here.

Why? The background of the writer (legal issues with auction houses and others) as well as his potential motives (readying a book to sell) are at a definite conflict to be pointing the finger at the supercollector of all supercollectors who, yes, had bad items in his collection. (He had the means to buy what he wanted … meaning it could happen.)

This wasn’t lost on a very qualified writer, Murray Chass — a former New York Times and Associated Press reporter who received the J.G. Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003.

He called the Post piece “journalism at its worst” and I completely agree.

As a long time member of the card & memorabilia industry and a collector for a longer time, I was shocked by the Post article, Barry deserved better. I met Barry Halper many times & spent time with him several times. I’m so pleased with Murray Chass’s story. Barry Halper was foremost a collector. A collector to the extreme. If he had bad pieces, and as Chass points out he did, he had them because of his trust in others, not knowing that they were bad. When I knew Barry, he was not interested in selling, he was collecting. It was only when his health turned bad that he started thinking about selling. A really good journalist would have investigated both sides of this store prior to filling his store. Thanks Mr. Chass & RIP Barry.

Nash isnt a saint but neither is Lifson or the Halper. Nash might be trying to sell a book but at least I hope it cleans up some of the trash thats in the hobby. If halper was such a collector he would have known what he was buying. He fabricated some of those items and god knows what else to give the items “provenance.” He (Halper) was a scumbag. Halper took advantage of alot of people, mlb, hof, everyday fans who saved up and eventually bought something at auction.

From mod: To my knowledge, there were authenticators for all items at the Sotheby’s (and subsequent) auctions …

My personal feeling is that the truth is somewhere between the extremes that either Nash or Halper’s son would like us to believe. Nash is involved in a legal dispute with the Halper estate and he has had his own issues with fraud in the hobby. However, that doesn’t change the fact that far too many of the items from Halper’s collection have been found to be forgeries. For a supposed expert who was shelling out a lot of money (thus a vested interest in checking the veracity of the stories submitted with items he acquired), it seems laughable that he would have accepted so many fakes purely on face value — he was a smart businessman, and smart businessmen do not make that type of mistake.

Sadly, it’s only Nash who is willing to engage in this battle. It would much better if someone with a far better reputation was openly questioning how so many “authenticated” frauds entered the market via Halper’s estate, but sometimes it takes the devil to start a necessary fight.

Just to add to my previous comment, if authenticators are truly to blame for frauds getting through during the Halper auctions (and Halper really was an incredibly stupid dupe — as unlikely as that seems), then the authenticators should be forced to explain their actions. They are the ones who said the items were legitimate 10 years ago, and now they are the same companies who are now either refusing to live up to their original guarantees or hiding behind legalese to avoid responsibility.

Oh yes, Murray Chass is the journalist I’d side with here. A HOFer from the “writers wing” that doesn’t exist. I like to think of Murray as Joe Posnanski of SI does when he ripped him a new one writing this:

Murray Chass is a nobody now. He’s a bitter man with a past and a blog he refuses to call a blog. He seems to bring dishonor to himself and his work with such regularity now that I cannot help but wonder if he was in fact a vile hack throughout his newspaper career but few noticed because he happened to be on the right side of the baseball labor issue and the indomitable Marvin Miller. …

Sure Halper had some fake items in his collection but to play judge and jury against a man no longer able to defend himself makes you no better than a scum forger. Sure Halper made up stories about playing for Jimmie Foxx at Miami and meeting Babe Ruth at the age of 8 but who in their life has never told a lie to make something they have look a little better. I think it’s very possible Mr. Halper genuinely believed the signatures to be authentic and only fabricated the story to give to how he obtained them. By the way if you are even thinking about saying “not me, I have never done anything like that” your a damn lier. Remember even the slightest embellishment to a story is still a lie.
Barry Halper had the financial means and all the right contacts to obtain anything he wanted. Who fakes items to put in their PC? Forgers create bogus items to device another for financial gain. Barry Halper never sold anything until his health turned south, so what was his motive to have fake items in his PC??